Diablo 3 Auction House Delayed, Says Blizzard

It should come as no surprise that the real-money auction house for Diablo 3 will be delayed. Blizzard has had its hands full dealing with the launch issues including the login situation and that crazy bug which kicks players out of the game completely just for wielding a shield. But according to Blizzard, things are looking so much better.

"We’ve been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush," Blizzard community manager Bashiok writes. "As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We’re continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region."

But that doesn't mean things are peachy keen enough to launch the auction house. "We’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We’ll post further updates on that in the near future," he adds. That's it. That's all you get for now.

Bashiok reports that the troubles the plagued the service in the early hours of Diablo 3's launch appeared again Wednesday night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough, he said.

"Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system," Bashiok adds. "Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We’re investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible."

Naturally Blizzard directs everyone to the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues players may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.